Elections officials in several states are concerned that the closing of mail-processing centers and post offices could disrupt vote-by-mail balloting this year, a potential problem that has led some members of Congress to call for a delay until after the November elections.

The U.S. Postal Service recently announced that it is moving ahead with plans to close at least 223 processing centers and thousands of post offices, adding to the 153 centers and 965 post offices that have closed since 2008. The moves are part of a wide-ranging cost-cutting strategy for an agency that estimates it will lose up to $18 billion a year by 2015.

Election officials are raising a variety of concerns, depending on the circumstances in their states. In California and Arizona, officials say the closing of processing centers could delay the delivery of mail-in ballots beyond the deadline to have them counted.

The state registrar in Ohio wrote the postmaster general with concerns about ensuring the security of ballots sent to processing centers that will be across state lines.

And in Oregon, the first state to require vote-by-mail, the state registrar says voters in rural areas where post offices are scheduled to be closed might have nowhere nearby to drop off their ballots. That would be problematic for those who have become accustomed to mailing them on the final weekend.

“We just have to have a moratorium through this presidential year to avoid disastrous consequences,” said California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who wrote a letter last week to the U.S. postmaster general urging a halt to the closures until after the November election. “I’m asking for a time-out.”

The Postal Service has said the next round of facilities won’t close until August, and it would then halt the process temporarily at the end of the month to minimize disruptions.

The agency might begin its closures in states that already have held their primaries, said Postal Service spokeswoman Patricia Licata. She acknowledged that the consolidation will lead to longer delivery times but dismissed concerns that it could disenfranchise voters.

“We realize that election mail is vital to the country, and we don’t want to do anything to disrupt that,” she said.

Mindful of the concerns back home, some members of Congress say they plan to ask for another delay, after the Postal Service agreed last year to a five-month moratorium on the closures that ends in mid-May.

According to the Postal Service, once the moratorium lifts, the earliest a mail-processing center could close would be August, partly because the mail agency must work to reassign employees. The first mail-processing centers to be affected, which are yet to be determined, would be a handful of places involving the least difficulty in transferring employees.

Congress is expected to take up the overhaul of the Postal Service in the coming weeks.

One in five voters cast ballots by mail in 2010, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, up from one in eight in 2004. In some states, such as Washington, ballots must be merely postmarked by Election Day to count.

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